TELEVISION YEARS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 300, 20 December 1938, Page 5

TELEVISION YEARS.

TWO IN ENGLAND. THE 8.8.C. SERVICE. WHAT THE VIEWERS LIKE BEST. LOXDON", Xovember 28. The television service of the British Broadcasting Corporation has recently passed it« second birthday. Since regular programmes began to be sent out daily' from the studio at Alexandra Palace in 1936, the television etaff has been doubled, the cost of an average eet has fallen from approximately £95 to £57, and the time allotted to programmes has risen from twelve to seventeen or eighteen hours a week.

It ii estimated that by Christmas there will be 10,000 owners of television set* in Britain, with a potential audience of from 40,000 to 50,000. Officially, transmissions from Alexandra Palace cover a radius of only 30 miles, but excellent pictures have been received at South Coast towns, 60 or 70 miles away, and even from Norwich, a hundred mile* to the' north-east. The cheapest set on the market costs £24, but its screen its very small and most -people pay £37 or more for their sets ; .luxury models with larger screens, suitable for reception in cliihs and public places, cost about £250. These costs are not likely to alter much for the present. The Old "Palace." The Alexandra Palace is an ornate, Victorian- • building dominating the heights, of North. It is surrounded by a hilly park, whose trees, grassland and artificial lake have already figured in a number of "outside broadcasts." The British Broadcasting Corporation has about a quarter of the vast building, and one passes from the dark, cavernous, plaster statue-strewn depths of the old palace to studios as bright and modern and clean as the most up-to-date hospital. The "transmission' system is that developed by.the Marconi-E.M.I. Company, which operates on a frequency of 45 mftgfedy^Ws' per setfoikt fWave-length 6.67 metres).. The ■ sound transmitter is an ultra short-wave installation of orthodox design for radiating speech and music aceompaaying vision -signals. Its operating frequency is 41.5 mega-cycles per second (wave-length, 7.23 metres).

Up to the present, the British Broadcasting Corporation television producers have only had one studio to work in. A second has - just been completed, but both will not be in .use simultaneously until Christmas. The studio is similar in many respects to a film studio, only the lighting is brighter and the space more restricted. When I visited it, they were transmitting a weekly feature called "Picture Page." in which various personalities are introduced to tell viewer* about their johs or hobbies. A writer, recently returned from Rumania, sat, quite at home, in a chair telling of the various customs of the country. His interviewer, Leslie Mitchell, ispoke but was not seen. The producer hovered in the background, waving directions to his camera crew. And that is one of the great differences between television and films. Differences In Production. A film producer can take any amount of time over a shot and have as many retakes as he likes. A television producer, though he may have had a preliminary rehearsal, is actually working on his production all the time it is being given out to its unseen audience. While the author still spoke, the next victim, a man with a wonderful collection of old playing cajds, was taken up into another corner of the studio so that the cameras could be switched on to him as soon as the first "turn" was finished.

I tip-toed out with jriy guide and went into a miniature cinema, where we watched the televised version of what we had just been'seeing in reality. The pictures, though small, were without the slightest flicker and as clear as any film.

I asked my guide what were the most popular items televised. "Long plays," he told me, "and outside I broadcasts of national events. We made 1a big step forward when we televised the Coronation procession. Since then viewers £av« Men the Armistice Day

service at the Cenotaph, the Lord Mayor's Show, film-making at Pinewood and* Denham, the Trooping of the Colour, the Wimbledon tennis matches, the boat race, the circus at Olympia, the Chelsea flower show, football matches, and the recent arrival in London of the King of Rumania.

"A new step forward was taken on November 17, when we televised the whole of ,T. B. Priestley's plav, "When We Are Married," from the London theatre where it is being performed. Soon we are to televise the arrival of first-nighters at a new musical comedy, a behind-the-scenes visit to the leading players and part of the first act of the show."

For the«e outside broadcasts the 8.8.C. has a mobile television unit, consisting of three vehicles each about the size of a large motor coach. The most important of these contains control room equipment similar to the control room at Alexandra Palace. When a picture has been obtained in the mobile control room it still has to be conveyed to Alexandra Palace to be broadcast in the usual way. For this purpose the general post office has laid a cable in the centre of London, which passes points of interest from which television broadcasts may be parried out. and is connected witn Broadcasting House and thence with Alexandra Palace. If the scene to be televised is not 011 the route followed by the television cable, a wireless link is used to convey the picture to Alexandra Palace, and for this purpose a complete ultra-short-wave vision transmitter has been provided in the second vehicle. The Drama Side. Theatre managers ar,p co-operating with the British Broadcasting Corporation in television broadcasts of their shows and these broadcasts are likely to increase. The film studios, too. are ready to work with television, but the film distributors are at present agaiu-st the idea of their feature pictures being televised, and the British Broadcasting Corporation has had to experiment with French films, though newsreels and short interest pictures are frequently televised.

"Our viewers are not very interested in televised feature films though," I was told. "They are not altogether satisfactory as much of the detail in their big scenes is lost on a small screen. So we are developing our own drama section."

He took me to the old. disused theatre of the Alexandra Palace, which is now the 8.8.C.'s scene painting and scene storage dock. Here is scenery of all types and periods. Seventeen painters are employed, most of them having come from film studios.

One of the most ambitious plays to be televised was "Cyrano de Bergerac." with Leslie Banks in the chief role. Nearly every week one or two fulllength play# are televised. They are shortened a little and usually run for ■from one to one and a half hours. In addition, a slightly shortened version of a plav currently running in the West End is televised from the studio with the London cast. Christmas Arrangements. Ballet has been found a popular television item and the Vic Wells Ballet and the various Russian ballets visiting London have all l>een *eeu by viewers. Modern dances are demonstrated before the television cameras, new dress fashions are shown off, gardening lessons are given from a small garden in the palace grounds; and close-ups. of baby animals from the Zoo are a very popular item. Television arrangements for Christmas include performances of several plays, among them CJordon Daviot's "Richard of Bordeaux," Beaumont and Fletcher's "Knight of the Burning Pestle," Edgar Wallace's "The Ringer." and the Hollywood comedy, "Once in a Lifetime." There will also be a revue and a 'burlesque pantomime of "Cinderella."

The director of television and the man chiefly responsible for ite success is Gerald Cock, who in his early days spent six years in Western America. New York and the mining district® of Utah. He once had a ranch in Hollywood. where Sunset Boulevard now stands, but sold ourt in 1911. Maybe if he had not done eo. British television would not hold the leading position it does in the world to-day.—X.A.X.A.